Tuesday 17 July 2012

Talking to the staff - 10 minutes of hell

Well, it had to happen at some point. My colleague and I were asked to talk about something we worked on this year in front of the whole staff in a 10 min slot on Wednesday morning.

We decided to talk about hexagons having used them in several lessons and in different ways, and having read many great blogs from fantastic tweachers. We also both experimented with SOLO and some of the lessons were delivered in that context... but neither of us feels expert enough on SOLO and a 10 minute-slot calls for 1 main idea.

So we pulled together several pictures we took in lessons and decided to simply talk through some of the things we'd done. I added a few pictures borrowed/stolen from other teachers' blogs to suggest that hexagons can be used in other subjects beyond English and Media. They can be used to encourage rich discussion and to allow students to make links between different bits of content/knowledge. The focus was also to make students work and test ideas more independently of the teacher and to rehearse ideas / try out vocabulary before an extended written response.

We have both felt that classes responded REALLY well and produced good written work. We also loved circulating and listening to some fab contributions, challenging and stretching as we went...

I hated talking to the whole staff though. It took me a whole hour afterwards to go back to a normal heartbeat. Can't stand the idea that anyone would think I am arrogant enough to dare to lecture them on anything...



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